It’s been a few years since Michigan State really left a mark in the NFL draft and that’s something that should be near the top of the list of priorities for new head coach Pat Fitzgerald.
For the past three NFL drafts, Michigan State has failed to have anyone selected on Days 1 or 2. Heck, the Spartans haven’t had a player selected before the sixth round since 2023. That’s unacceptable for a program that had an 80-year NFL draft streak as recently as 2021 before Mel Tucker’s first crop of players broke it.
Tucker almost made up for it by getting Kenneth Walker III and Jayden Reed to the league via the second round, but the damage was already done by that mediocre 2020 roster (not completely Tucker’s fault).
In the prime years of Mark Dantonio, having just 1-2 picks would have been considered a major down year. He had five draft classes with three-plus Spartans hearing their names called which accounted for nearly 50 percent of his time as Michigan State’s head coach. Of course, even he had some down years like 2009, 2010, 2014, and 2018 where only one player was drafted.
Still, Dantonio had 19 players selected in the first four rounds throughout his tenure which followed the trend from the coaches before him. Michigan State may have been mediocre when Dantonio took over, but the program always produced NFL talent.
In fact, from 1995-2007 before Dantonio took over, Michigan State also had 19 draft picks in the first four rounds. Since Dantonio retired in 2020, however, there have been just two such draft picks for MSU.
It’s up to Fitzgerald to right the ship and flip Michigan State’s draft luck back in the right direction.
Pat Fitzgerald now has the blueprint for what not to do
Fitzgerald has the luxury of looking at the two previous head coaches in East Lansing and taking notes about what not to do in order to avoid failure.
Tucker had an 11-win season where he seemingly did everything right from portal recruiting to landing solid high school prospects to developing NFL talent, but he veered away from that in 2022 and eventually lost his job in early 2023. He produced two pre-Day 3 picks.
Jonathan Smith, on the other hand, didn’t do a whole lot right in terms of recruiting and roster management and it’s led to back-to-back disappointing seasons. He had a decent eye for under-the-radar talent, but he wasn’t around long enough to prove that he could develop and he lost a lot of his top guys to the transfer portal. He had zero pre-Day 3 picks and just three overall in two years.
Fitzgerald has already done a decent job of landing some talent, but we’re going to find out quickly just how much it develops under his coaching staff.
The plan is simple: do what Dantonio did and don’t do what Tucker and Smith did. Easy enough.
It’s time to make Michigan State an NFL factory again. When that happens, recruiting improves and the wins begin to pour in.
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